Do you believe this statistics from Worldometers? China has 1.4 billion people but only 86,551 COVID-19 cases. 

Let me give you something to think about:

1. Vietnam has close to 100 million people but only 1,366 cases. If we multiply this number by 14 to get China’s population of 1.4 billion, we get only 19,124 cases. That’s a lot less than China.
2. Thailand has a population of about 70 million people. They have 4,107 cases. If we multiply this by 20 to get China’s population, we get 84,280 cases - a little less than China.
3. Cambodia has 348 cases. Their population is 17 million. If we multiply 348 by 348 to get China’s population, we get 30,276 cases.
4. Taiwan has 716 cases and a population of 24 million. If Taiwan’s population were 1.4 billion like China, the number of cases would be about 51,500.

My point is that that are several other countries with a better record than China. So there is no reason to think that China’s figure are fake. But I find it hard to believe that the US is so bad at containing the virus that there are more than 200,000 new cases in a single day!

UPDATE 13 DEC 20

There have been several comments that say the US does more testing than any other country and that is why there are more cases in the US.

For people who think this way, please consider the following news item from China:

QINGDAO, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Qingdao, a coastal city in east China's Shandong Province, has vowed to complete a citywide nucleic acid testing campaign covering all 11 million residents within five days starting Monday, after a new cluster of local COVID-19 infections emerged.

As of 8 a.m. Thursday, more than 9.94 million people had been sampled, while over 7.64 million of the collected samples had been tested. Except for the cases already reported, no new positive samples have been detected.

Xinhua Headlines: China's Qingdao tests 11 million after local COVID-19 cases emerge

7.64 million people tested with zero positive cases. Clearly, the many cases in the US is not a consequence of testing more people.

Here are some of the things that China did but the US does not do:

• Compulsory wearing of masks and social distancing
• Contact tracing, testing and quarantine for close contacts up to three levels of contacts
• Total lockdown in high infection areas
• Mass testing of entire communities (millions of people at a time) to rid cities of the infection
• Quarantine in low infected areas
• Compulsory hospitalization for all infected persons, all paid for by the government

The above are some of the reasons there are no more infections in China, except for a few imported cases. Not simply testing more people.

And the following is the reason for US new cases jumping to more than 200K a day:

A typical Trump election rally. No mask, no social distancing.